


DISTURBING THE WATER'S SURFACE

by AgnesClementine



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Author's Favorite, Diego Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Diego Hargreeves is Bad at Feelings, Diego Hargreeves-centric, Gen, Hurt Diego Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Waterboarding, Whump, and therapy, but what else is new, diego is an asshole, sort of jkybhdcd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:53:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25829974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgnesClementine/pseuds/AgnesClementine
Summary: He seriously fucked up this time.***********************************Alternatively titled "Diego finds out he has another power, almost has his Britney Spears moment, and realizes that he most definitely needs therapy."There are no spoilers for s2
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & The Hargreeves
Comments: 38
Kudos: 329





	DISTURBING THE WATER'S SURFACE

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be just 2k of Diego whump that s2 awakened in me but it turned into this whole thing despite the fact I'm supposed to be writing something else entirely ajdhdv XD
> 
> Anyway, this changed like 3 different plots so forgive me if it's a raging dumpster fire and makes no sense. Also, uh, my only beta is Grammarly and I did not read it through before posting, so, uh, heads up.
> 
> Still, I hope you guys will enjoy it and let me know what you think! Comments are welcome and appreciated! :D

The air stinks of rotten fish. It's a strong odor that Diego can name as soon as he drifts back into consciousness, thick and mixing with the smell of salt and seaweed dried in the late July heat. His whole body throbs dully, _thud thud_ in waves with his heartbeat, and he feels heavy with the realization that he fucked up. Badly.

It was supposed to be easy. Or not easy, but manageable- he was supposed to be able to manage this. Yeah, it was a whole damn organization/mafia/whatever the fuck exactly, but he was picking them off in pieces. A few guys here, a few there, a well-timed tip-off to the police, some thugs roughed up and put into jail or a hospital for the time being. Diego was on them like an artist with a chisel on a block of marble- and then the block fell on top of him and crushed him.

Almost literally.

His face hurts, eyelids like sandpaper over his eyes which are faced with complete darkness once he peels them open. A bag over his head, then, he concludes, tries his wrists and ankles. Tied to a chair. Which is not ideal in the slightest but he thinks he can slip his hand free; the rope burns will be a bitch to tend to and he might have to force his thumb out of its socket, but he found out early on that he's got slender hands that are not hard to slip through tight spaces.

So once he's got his hand free, he will finally see where he is (though he's already pretty sure it's a warehouse at the docks, by the smell alone) and then he'll get the fuck out of here and recuperate at home. Because these guys sure as fuck didn't bring him here for flowers and a four-course meal.

It's a plan. It's a good, doable plan. But, of course, it doesn't work out.

He's got his thumb ground against the armrest and pushes down with as much force as he can muster until there's a pop and the pain fires through his palm and up his arm- and then he hears the door opening.

He stills, hopes they won't notice he’s awake and in the middle of an escape and are going to leave soon. He can play unconscious for a while longer.

“You up, Sleeping Beauty?” A booted foot kicks his ankle and he grits his teeth, bites down on a curse a threat.

There’s some rustling, metal scraping over cemented ground and water splashing. It’s all coming from behind him, behind the chair’s low backrest.

Some sort of a cylinder squeaks- and then Diego’s gasping, whole body jerking as cold, icy water crashes over his head, slides down his chest and back.

“There we go,” The ankle-kicker says, smug and pulls the now drenched bag off his head.

Diego squints at the assault of light, hair plastered to his face, and still clinging to the sliver of hope that he’ll manage to escape when the guy goes off to inform their boss that Diego is awake.

He spies his harness on the ground a little ways off on his right, his knives set into a neat line in front of it. It is a warehouse- a small one, with square, wooden crates, and metal barrels ready to be shipped off somewhere lining the far wall behind the guy’s back.

He’s big, probably Diego’s height but broader, more meat on his bones. Core muscles strength to Diego’s agility.

“Ain’t so fucking tough now, tied to a chair, huh?” The guy taunts, leaning down to be eye-level with Diego and pointing a finger at his face.

And- “Wow, that’s original, congrats, man. You came up with that all on your own?”

The guy’s not a talker, Diego finds out just then, when he gets punched in response. _Core strength, yeah_ , he thinks as his head snaps back hard enough that his neck twinges. _Jesus fuck_.

He groans, hisses when the guy grabs the handful of his hair to yank his head forward again. His thumb throbs sharply.

“You’ve been a real pain in the ass for the boss,” he tells Diego, tightening his grip on Diego’s hair. Some strands are still clinging to his wet face, irritate the hell out of him, and so god help him, Diego’s gonna chop it all off when this is done.

“And let me guess, it’s not the type of pain in the ass that he likes,” Diego quips, licks his lips and tastes blood. Nosebleed. Possibly broken nose, by the feel of it. _Awesome_.

That earns him another harsh yank- Hair. Scissors. It’s a date.- before the guy finally lets him go. He crowds into Diego’s personal space, face inches away.

His breath smells like Thin Mints and beer when he says, “You talk a lot of smack for someone who’s helpless right now.”

Diego head-butts him. Whoops loudly because, yeah, his forehead now hurts on top of everything else, but shit, was it satisfying.

“Fuck!” The guy roars, cups his now bleeding nose ( _nose for nose_ , Diego supposes and hears “ _Now you’re twinsies_ ” in what sounds suspiciously much like Klaus in his head) and then lunges forward to wrap his hand around Diego’s throat. “That was a fucking dumb thing to do,” he sneers in Diego’s face.

“Yeah, well, felt pretty damn good, though,” Diego croaks out, refusing to back down. His whole body is wired up, aches gone for the moment as adrenaline courses through his veins. His cells scream _action, movement, fight, survival_ and he grins, drunk on it, bloody and wet.

The guy chuckles meanly, no humor in it, “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

“We’ll see how you’ll feel after this,” he tells Diego and steps back.

Diego goes on the alert then, truly, as he starts walking to the side and disappears somewhere behind Diego. He’s still close, if anything, his footsteps are getting closer, and Diego cranes his neck back to try and see what he’s doing.

He only sees a black blur of the bag being pulled over his head again. He assumes that means that the guy is going to leave again, get more cronies and his boss so they can intimidate Diego into staying out of their business.

But, oh, is he wrong.

Hands dig into his shoulders from the side, pulling him back despite him resisting against it, and then he’s submerged.

He bucks, whole body trashing, suddenly washed over with cold sweat as the water rushes in from all sides, his head and neck completely under. He feels the pressure of it against his skin, lukewarm but endless, surrounding him. It’s everywhere, in his eyes, although squeezed shut, in his nose, ears. He keeps his mouth sealed, lungs already burning because he wasn’t prepared, but trying to think rationally because he has to let him up soon. They need him for something, they’re not just gonna kill him here. Right?

_Right. Right. Of course._

It doesn’t make it feel any better. Uninvited, panic swells in his chest, makes it tight and hot and his heartbeat faster, more erratic. It burns.

His palms are slick with sweat and as he fights, tugging at the restraints, trying to get free, the water splashes over his shoulders, slides down his already wet back, a little river of it slithering like a snake between his shoulder blades and down his spine.

And then, finally, he’s pulled upright again, gasping at the air greedily, shaking.

Hands on his shoulders shake him with malice, make his brain rattle.

“What do you say now?” He hears faintly over the water in his ears. “You’re not so brave anymore, huh?”

Diego feels the need to clear his throat, to cough, to make sure his airways are working, to make sure nothing is hurt, that it’s just oxygen making its way into his lungs again that burns so much.

Instead, he rasps, “Thanks, that was refreshing,” because let it never be said that Diego won’t self-sabotage himself any chance that he gets. His life is already enough of a proof for that. And he likes to be consistent on certain things.

It’s a wrong thing to say, it couldn’t not be, and this time Diego is ready, gulps in one last lungful before his head is back underwater. This was the proof that they won’t kill him; if they wanted to, he wouldn’t be let up for air, or they could’ve shot him, or beaten him to death, or done any number of things to put him six feet under by now. But they didn’t and that’s his guarantee. So he doesn’t trash, white-knuckles the armrest with the hand with all five functioning fingers, curls his toes in his boots, reminds himself to be still. The air will last him longer if he doesn’t extort himself. More movement equals faster heartbeat and that equals faster breathing and he can’t afford himself that.

The water feels like it’s pushing against him, like it’s trying to push past his lips, already filling up his nose.

Fingers dig bruises into his shoulders and then one disappears- Diego wonders in surprise if he’ll pull him up so soon again- and then a fist connects with his stomach.

It pounds against his battered ribs next and makes his muscles spasm, legs trying to kick out and arms trying to shove away while his spine curves around the pain. The unexpectedness of it pushes a pained groan out of his mouth, releasing air and within a millisecond, the water rushes in.

He chokes, feels it slide down his throat, and all thoughts of calm and collected vanish from his head. He feels his hand slip free, swigs it upwards in desperation only to have it slammed back onto the armrest, meaty fist gripping his palm and grinding the dislocated joint of his thumb against its socket, sending explosions of pain all the way to his shoulder, white-hot hurt of knives splintering tiny bones into pieces.

His back arches, limbs trashing while panic burns a path through his body. He tries to bring his head up, just a bit, just enough to cough out the water, but the asshole smacks his whole hand over Diego’s face and shoves him deeper down, neck bent back painfully. He needs something, anything, fingers clenching around empty air, aching for the feel of his knives, warm with his body heat, smooth and thin against his palms. He wants to gasp for air and somewhere amidst the panic, his brain short-circuits and makes him open his mouth, lets the water in while fruitlessly trying to get more air. He’s gasping, swallowing and breathing in water, feels the bag over his head sucked in with every inhale. His lungs burn. Oh god, his lungs are on fire, he’s going to burn up from the inside, turn into charcoal and never breathe again, his lungs will turn to dust and _he will never breathe again and he’s going to die. He’s going to die-_

His body twitches and everything goes fuzzy around the edges, wrapped in a silvery fog; the pain, the burn, the hurt, sounds, and sensation cease to exist and for a short, sweet second Diego is just…floating.

But then it’s all back; his chest feels tight, like his lungs are glued together, front to back. That’s not good. He’s not in pain- not the scorching type of asphyxiation-, but it’s not good, it’s not good, it’s not good, _he needs to breathe-_

His mind pulls at one of the strings around him ( _strings everywhere, made of thin, silk threads, baby blue and gunmetal and bubblegum pink-_ ) and through the fog he hears a shout, fingers on his face digging and slipping away, the hand crushing his palm into dust disappearing.

He emerges out of the water with a loud sob, forcefully coughing with little success because he has to get the water out and _he has to breathe, he’s going to die if he doesn’t breathe_.

He wrenches the bag off his head with clumsy, shaking fingers, his hair sticking to his face, wet and dripping. His whole hand hurts so much he wants to cry, tears stinging at his eyes, nausea rolling around in his stomach as he sets to untying his other wrist and his ankles. Bending down is a problem, his whole middle bruised and pulsing with pain at each movement.

The guy is lying motionless in front of him, Diego’s knife stuck to the hilt between his ribs.

Diego yanks it out, allows a new stream of blood to flow out, and steps over him with shaky legs like a newborn lamb. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a deep, metal bucket perched on a low table with wheels behind his chair. He goes to collect his knives; gets down on his hands and knees shamelessly to grab everything because bending down again is not an option.

His hip is starting to twinge like a motherfucker, and he hobbles his way out of there, sneaking through the shadows, one ear and eye out for the signs of someone following him, the rest of him preoccupied with the fact that he’s still not breathing.

  * ····



The gym is dark and silent by the time he finds his way home. But he’s done this so many times already that he can navigate his way to the boiler room and the lockers room and showers in the pitch black. He beelines it for the showers now, forgoing his room because that would mean taking the same path twice and he doesn’t have the energy for that. Everything he has on him, he drops on the less-than-clean tiled floor (he has to remember to scrub it out soon) and steps under one of the showerheads.

He endures the cold water only for as long as it takes him to rub out the blood from his skin, out of his hair. His body is a collection of bruises, angry, abused flesh beaten raw and red, already turning the dark purple color of blood pooling under the skin. He can feel where the skin split under the force on his cheekbone, above his eyebrow, just off-center to the left on his bottom lip when the water hits the cuts.

His hand is a blur of red and blue, the joint swollen and in a desperate need of an icepack. Still, he spans his palms over his ribcage, still as if he were dead, muscles and ribs unmoving under the splotches of blood and imprints of fists. A boot print stamped onto his hip, thin, sharp lines of a crowbar on his side.

He seriously fucked up this time.

_Maybe he’s dead_. The thought springs out of the back of his mind, always around the corner when Diego comes home sluggish and bleeding and untethered like this.

“I’m Diego,” he rasps into the silence, listens to how it bounces off the walls, how it leaves a mark in the air. Then again, “I’m Diego, I’m Diego.”

“D-I-E-G-O,” he spells quietly to himself as he walks to his room, over and over as he pulls on clean underwear, sweatpants, shirt.

When he curls up under the covers, he retrieves his phone from the nightstand. He dials the mansion, the only number that he knows by heart and that would actually mean something now.

It rings and rings and Diego doesn’t breathe. He feels too stiff in his body, too small to move it properly when it’s locked down like this.

The phone rings and then, finally, someone answers.

“Hello?”

“Can you hear me?” Diego asks.

On the other end, Vanya says, “I- Diego? Is that you?”

“Yeah,” he says. He wonders what she’s doing there and then remembers she’s staying over for a while because the apartment above her got flooded and it’s better to be safe than sorry. Well. It’s better for some of them.

“I can hear you. Is everything okay? It’s really late.”

_Not dead then._

“Yeah. Go back to sleep,” he says and hangs up. He puts the phone under his pillow, goes to wrap his arms around himself- then remembers his hand and goes to grab an ice pack from the freezer.

  * ····



In the morning, everything hurts that much worse and his chest falls and rises with his breathing. He’s slow to get up, feeling like what old, busted up houses with rotten woodwork look like. He swallows down some over-the-counter painkillers and then drags himself to the showers to pick up his stuff before the gym opens. Leaving his knives in the public place like that is just asking for trouble.

Everything is where he left it- thankfully; strewn chaotically over the floor, his clothes stinking of dampness, sweat and blood, his harness kicked pitifully into one corner.

Once he has everything gathered in his arms- torso muscles and ribs protesting from all the bending- he catches his reflection in the mirror and cringes. He looks like a homeless guy whose face went through a meat grinder. Jesus.

He dumps the clothes into the dirty pile in his room, grabs his shaving kit, and goes back to shave his face with painstaking care of all the cuts and bruises. He contemplates just fishing out the electric razor and giving himself a buzzcut while he’s at it- but ultimately decides that he’s way too fucking tired for that right now.

Face clean, he tucks his hair behind his ears and inspects the palette of bruises in his reflection; dark smudges under both of his eyes and across the bridge of his nose, a cut and a splotch of purple above his eyebrow and on his cheekbone, a large bruise blooming on the curve of his jaw, bottom lip busted open and swollen. A few smaller scratches and dots of red and purple and blue on his cheeks and forehead. He’s stupidly lucky that he didn’t take any hits to the eyes. He fucking hates having swollen eyelids.

  * ····



“Jesus. What happened to your hand?” Luther asks him, doing a double-take when he comes through the front door of the mansion.

Diego shrugs, purposefully striding towards the infirmary. He can’t find any elastic bandages in his place even though he knows there has to be at least one completely new roll somewhere.

“I dislocated my thumb,” he says simply.

He reset the joint- and applied antiseptic cream to all the cuts he could see and reach- in the morning after the swelling went down enough to allow him to do so, but his hand is still all blue and purple, feels tender and hard to the touch.

“Oh,” Luther says, obviously having more questions; most likely about the array of bruises Diego has on display. But he keeps them to himself, at least aware that Diego’s not in the mood. “Um, do you want help with something?”

Diego considers it, says, “You know where elastic bandages are?”

“Uh, yeah. I think so.”

Diego sweeps a hand in front of himself and tells him, “Lead the way, big guy.”

In the infirmary, Luther starts rifling through the cabinets. As he does, he tosses, “You shaved,” into the awkward silence that settles over them.

“Yeah.”

“It looks nice….you look younger.”

“You mean I looked old before?”

“Uh,” Luther says, “no?”

Diego smirks even though it pulls at the cut on his lip.

Luther turns with a victorious “ha!” and a roll of bandages before his eyes settle on Diego’s hands.

Which-

“Um. Do you- should I wrap your hand?”

And that’s…absolutely not something Diego wants. He can take care of himself and wrap his own damn hand- except he can’t. He can’t do it right single-handedly; he usually bums Al into doing it. It just doesn’t feel right blowing off Luther because of that, while he’s already here and his brother offered to help.

“Just this once,” he says, words physically hurting as they leave his mouth. “And if you tell anyone-“

“I won’t,” Luther says immediately, eyes big and earnest and then eagerly motions for Diego to sit down.

His work is a bit clumsy, but it’s probably better than what Diego would’ve done on his own.

  * ····



He stays for lunch because everyone else does and it’s not a particularly interesting affair. Well. By Hargreeves standards it isn’t.

“Say, Diego, brother dearest, what happened to your face?” Klaus asks him while they’re clearing the table.

Diego takes the cutlery from Vanya’s plate and stacks his plate on top of it, the cutlery joining his on the top. “Got into a fight.”

“With who? Luther’s angrier double?”

He keeps his eyes downcast, his hair like a curtain around his face, and collects the glasses into a neat pile and sticks the fingers of his working hand into five of them to carry over to the sink. With his back turned to the rest of his siblings, he says, “A few thugs this guy sent for me.”

“What does that mean? Are you in danger?” Vanya asks.

“No,” he lies, “they were just supposed to intimidate me.”

“You don’t really look like that’s what they were aiming for,” Allison comments. She’s in town for the week, something work-related that doubles as family bonding time.

Diego frowns, opens the faucet, and then remembers that, yeah, washing the dishes with a fucked up hand is embarrassing as fuck. He closes the faucet, ears burning.

“Yeah, well, it just means that I’m starting to get close to something they want to keep a secret, so I’m doing my job right.”

“It’s not a job, Diego, nobody’s paying you to run around in a leather get-up and throw knives at people.”

“Criminals,” he corrects her, biting down on, _You don’t think I fucking know that_.

“Who reset your hand?” Five suddenly pipes up.

Diego turns around, says, “I did,” then looks down at it to see if there’s something wrong. There isn’t. “Why?”

“The bandages don’t look tight enough.”

“Luther bandaged it,” he admits, deciding he doesn’t need Five giving him shit about his bandaging on top of everything.

Luther, in turn, hunches his shoulders around his ears under the scrutiny. “I didn’t do that in a while, I’m a bit rusty, okay?” he defends himself.

“I can see that,” Five responds drily. He turns back to Diego. “Let me see it.”

“What? No,” Diego says, automatically cradling the injured limb to his chest protectively.

“Diego, let me see,” Five repeats, firmer, rounding the table to get closer, and Diego snipes, “Aw, what, you’re worried about me? Found a spare heart somewhere?”

Five stops in his stride and snarls back, “Fine, you fucking moron, if something goes wrong, it’s gonna be your idiotic fault!” And then he disappears in a flash of blue.

Diego’s mouth stings.

Everyone else is suddenly finding the rest of the kitchen awfully interesting, continuing with the cleaning around him. Only Klaus stops by him, salad bowl in his hands, to inform him, “Ah, your lip’s bleeding.”

And it’s innocent enough, it’s just a heads up, same as saying _You’ve got something between your teeth_ or _Your shirt’s got a stain on it_ but it rubs him wrong because he just fucked up with Five and now he’s fucking up again and everyone can see it. He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth roughly, probably only sending a new stream of blood flowing and pushes past Klaus, stomping out of the kitchen.

  * ····



The front window is busted. Inside the gym, there’s a brick with his domino mask drawn crudely on it. Diego’s inner kid, naïve and still filled with hope and ideas of honor and justice that being a superhero brings, almost feels giddy with the knowledge that he pissed off some corrupted asshole enough to warrant such a bold threat- but that is extinguished with the look on Al’s face.

“Sorry,” Diego says, “You can take the reparations out of my pay.”

“Oh, I already did,” Al responds and on the way to his office tosses, “Clean up the glass.”

Diego sighs and goes to get the broom.

  * ····



He goes to sleep in the mansion that night. Not because he’s scared, but because Al informed him that his ass and all his shit is getting thrown onto the street if he brings more trouble. And Diego actually likes his boiler room place and his shitty janitor job because they are his; he got them on _his own, for himself_ , and he’d rather not lose them if that’s possible.

He trudges up to his room, changes into his sleeping clothes, kicks the duffle under his bed, heaves in a deep breath- and then, suddenly, gets struck by a terrifying thought.

What if he stops breathing again?

What if he wakes up with his lungs stuck together inside his chest cavity, empty and cold and dizzy because there’s no oxygen in his blood-

He goes to brush his teeth, then goes downstairs and loiters around the kitchen until he has opened every single drawer and cupboard at least seven times. He’s tired; everything still hurts and throbs and the knowledge he’ll have to do something about his situation soon looms above his head. And he’s so tired but terror grips him when he remembers how it felt; those few seconds of transition when his brain fell into a haze, not dead but not completely alive either.

He moves from the kitchen into the living room. He paces the length of it; diagonally, along every wall, the floorboards chilling and the carpet itching his bare feet. God, why hasn’t anyone thrown out that damn thing yet? At least Dad’s portrait is gone (Klaus torched it in the yard, Diego saw him, but everyone thinks someone just threw it into the trash).

He drops down onto the couch and rubs his feet together to chase away the sensation of rough, scratchy material. The exhaustion is easier to ignore sitting down, his body still and not jostling any of his aches and pains.

  * ····



He feels someone moving around him just a second before the water splashes over his face. It chills him, sends goosebumps rising over his skin and sticks his hair to his neck and face- _strangling, strangling, strangling_ , his gasp letting some of it in his mouth and _no, not again_ , it slips down his tongue, coats his windpipe, _downdowndown_ to his lungs, submerging and drowning all those little alveoli bubbles _oh god he’s going to stop breathing again_ -

“Diego!” Someone shouts, grabs onto his arms and he lashes out blindly, hair in his eyes- stupid fucking hair, he’s sick of it- only to be pulled upright, sitting.

“Jesus, Diego,” Klaus says, his brother, in their dead, bastard father’s huge ridiculous living room, holding an empty glass in his hand.

His heart hammers against his sternum and he feels shame cut through him like a razor. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-

“Don’t fucking do that! What the hell is wrong with you!” He sneers, livid, and shaking when he shoots up to his feet.

Klaus blinks at him, an expression like Diego suddenly grew a second head.

Diego glares at him, feels strands of hair plastered to his face, and tries to push them away. But they stick stubbornly, evading his fluttering, unsteady fingers, latched onto his skin like leeches, biting and sucking out his blood and he’s suddenly beyond fed up with it. He wants it gone.

He notices the rest of his siblings standing at the doorway and watching the scene unfold only when he shoves past them, washed with shame and embarrassment anew, to march towards the bathroom.

His heart is still beating madly when he gets there just to realize his electric razor is in his duffle, in his room, and doubles back to get it. His fingers catch on the zipper, tangle into sleeves and pant legs and then he has it, gripped tightly in his hand.

Allison catches him in the hallway.

“What was-“ she cuts off when her eyes fall to his hand, “what are you doing?”

“Cutting my hair,” he responds curtly, brushes past her, and hears her splutter.

“What- Diego!” He hears her quicken her steps, following after him, and decides to ignore her. She’ll leave him alone soon.

“Diego!” She says, tries to turn him around with a hand on his shoulder but he shrugs her off and steps into the bathroom.

She shoves herself in next to him, says again, “Wait-“

Diego turns on the razor and lifts it up and Allison grabs his wrist, hissing, “Diego! Just wait! Why do you want to cut your hair?”

“Because I’m sick of it!” He responds, wrenches his hand free.

She grabs it again, asks, “Why?”

“Because!” He yells and pulls it back again. His thumb is fucking throbbing.

Allison forces his arms down, grabs his razor and loops her arms around him.

“Fuck off! Let go!” He yells, trying to shove her away, not very successful with only one hand. His face burns, pulsing with his heartbeat and his eyes sting.

“No. You’re upset and you’re not thinking-“ he jabs the heel of his palm in her ribs and she shouts, “Stop it! Stop acting like a fucking child, Diego!”

And. He sags against her, not sure if he ever felt this humiliated and ashamed in his life- he probably has, Reginald Hargreeves sure had a special way with words, but it’s different now, coming from Allison.

She sets the razor on the sink and nudges him towards the bathtub, pushes him to sit on the edge of it and sits next to him, so they don’t have to look each other in the face.

“Why do you want to cut your hair?” She asks, softer and quieter this time and Diego thinks. His hand hurts.

“It’s always in the way,” he says, cracks his knuckles.

“That’s because you never tie it up,” Allison tells him with a huff. Diego feels her eyes on the side of his face, then she stands up and grabs a big, fluffy white towel from the cupboard under the sink.

She presses it against his face, holds it still until Diego gets the memo and starts patting his face dry. It smells like vanilla fabric softener and that is, somehow, what brings the tears to his eyes. He curses himself, every bit of his energy focused on keeping his breathing steady and shoulders still so that Allison doesn’t notice, and presses the towel over his eyes.

He feels her grab the long edges of it and starts rubbing them over his head. He tenses, feels her rub strands of his hair between them before her bare fingers start combing through them.

“God, relax, you maniac, I’m just untangling your hair,” she mutters, swatting at his shoulder half-heartedly.

He lets his shoulders drop, breathes, breathes, breathes. Says into the towel, “I’m sorry I hit you.”

When he drops the towel in his lap, he watches her reflection in the mirror collect the top part of his hair, pull a hair tie from her wrist with her teeth, and tie it into a clumsy half-bun on the back of his head, barely visible in the mirror.

She lightly brushes the strands tickling his neck and leaves him alone.

  * ····



The breakfast starts in silence, that awkward, post-Diego kind of silence where others don’t know where they stand with him just yet and where he’s beating himself over with the knowledge he overreacted and fucked up.

Then he says, “I have a new power.”

Even the clinking of silverware stops then. He pokes at the raw ring of bell pepper on his plate, doesn’t look up.

“Oh,” Klaus says first, “that’s…nice?”

“No,” Diego says immediately, “it’s not.”

It hurts to admit; trajectory manipulation? That’s pretty cool, but it has its limits. It’s not teleporting or manipulating reality or anything else and this new power blows. He has a second power to level him out and it’s a complete suck-fest.

“What is it?” Five asks.

“Not breathing. Or holding my breath for a long time. One of the two,” he says with a shrug, not particularly keen of analyzing which it is.

“For how long?”

Diego thinks about it, tells himself to be calm, to indulge because admittedly, it might be important in the future. Nothing is really set in stone for them.

“Not sure. A couple of hours for sure; from when I was…waterboarded-“ that seems the most accurate, he thinks, “-and still when I went to sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” Vanya says, “when you were _what_?”

“Waterboarded,” he says slower.

“Oh, my God, Diego-“

“And you didn’t mention this before because…?”

“Because he’s an idiot,” Five says, asks, “How did that happen?” without acknowledging Diego’s glare.

He tells them, explains the case and how it went sideways but Diego was handling it-

And then Five disappears, probably getting bored, the little bastard, even though he was the one who asked in the first place.

  * ····



He’s collecting the plates from the table when Klaus says, “I like your hair.”

He looks up, resists lifting his hand to touch the half-bun Allison made, not exactly surprised because if someone was going to comment on his hair, it’s Klaus. Still, this is somewhat unfamiliar.

“Thanks,” he says.

Klaus rocks on his heels, washing the glasses and setting them upside down on a clean towel to dry. Over the sounds of splashing, he almost misses Klaus’ “You think maybe I could braid it sometimes?”

Which is…well. Not what Diego thought his life was going to turn into. He’s not sure if Klaus has a hidden motive; is Diego supposed to braid his in turn? Because Klaus will be disappointed to find out that Diego doesn’t know how to braid hair.

“Maybe,” he says.

  * ····



The next day, he drags himself to work with sheer willpower and want to keep his job, shitty as it is. There’s not a lot of people in when he arrives; the middle of the week and work time is not a really ideal period for people to exercise. He tinkers around with the AC until the place clears out, then quickly mops up the floor and makes his way to the showers. It’s…definitely not as disgusting as it could be, but he still cracks open the long, slim windows on top of the outer wall and pours bleach on every available surface. He unclogs the drains, pours bleach in them too, then wipes the mirrors and scrubs out the sinks. Bleach stinks something fierce and makes his eyes sting and water, so he goes to oil the hinges on supply closet while waiting for it to clear out a bit.

The radio host starts with daily news while he’s hammering in a new nail for one of Al’s framed certificates that fell out last week and he almost whacks his own hand when the host says, “Yesterday evening, our police department made a record number of arrests upon answering an anonymous tip. Arriving at the scene, they were greeted by numerous individuals who have all been tied to the smuggling ring that has recently become active in the city. The arrested were immediately transported to the hospital due to heavy injuries the majority of them has sustained from what they described as “a vicious attack from an unknown figure that materialized out of thin air in a flash of blue”-“

_God. Fucking. Damn. It._

He checks the showers and mops up the tiles with an apple-scented solution.

  * ····



Five finds him in the kitchen. Or, more correctly, Diego waits for him there for an embarrassing amount of time, crunching down on a slice of dry toast. He even makes coffee, counting on the smell of coffee beans to lure in his oldest/youngest brother. And they do.

He holds the pot close to his body, leaning against the counter, when Five appears at the doorway. They size each other up, still as statues, eye contact steady.

Five says, “You were on the right track.”

It sounds like a backhanded compliment.

Diego points a finger at him, hisses, “ _You_ had _no_ right to do anything. It was _my_ case.”

Five narrows his eyes at him, “Right, I was supposed to let you get drowned again. _Naturally._ ”

Diego’s hand tightens around the pot’s handle. “You don’t know-“

“ _Jesus! Of course_. Yeah, sure, I don’t know if it would happen again. _Sorry_. I was supposed to let you get hurt/maimed or killed. Duly noted, Diego.”

“I’m a grown man-” Diego starts and Five zaps himself to the opposite side of the table.

“A grown man who continuously refuses anyone’s help because he’s a self-sabotaging wreck,” Five snaps, leaning over the table. “I’m older than you, you don’t think I know what you’re doing? Don’t fucking insult me like that.”

Diego doesn’t say anything.

“Maybe you’re fooling everyone else- which I fucking doubt, you’re doing a shit job of hiding it- but I’ve been there. And I didn’t come back to watch any of you run yourselves into an early grave. Get that through your thick skull.”

He teleports to the cupboard next to Diego, fishes out a cup and sets it with a clang on the table.

“Are you gonna pour me some coffee or do I have to pry the pot out of your hand?”

Diego pours him the coffee.

He takes a cup for himself, pours coffee into it. He doesn’t even like coffee that much.

They sit at the table, side by side, and Diego takes a sip.

It’s bitter and hot, but it goes down easier than everything Five just said. His words hang above Diego's head like a noose; if he’s not careful, he’ll tangle in them and strangle himself.

It’s not- he wasn’t doing it on purpose. He doesn’t think he was. He’s not trying to- He’s not.

Five pours himself another cup.

Diego holds his cup between his hands, taking in the warmth even as his palms sweat.

_He wasn’t doing it on purpose_.

It sounds like a lie, even inside his own head.

Five downs his second cup, nudges his elbow. “You’re gonna finish that?”

Diego passes him his cup.

Five stands up, cup cradled in one palm, and settles his free hand on Diego’s shoulder with a sigh.

He says, “Chin up, kid,” and disappears.

Diego doesn’t think he’s ever been this disturbed by a conversation or by its end in his life.

  * ····



He stays at the mansion again, even though he can safely go back to his boiler room apartment now. It’s late and he thinks everyone is already asleep when he gets to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. So he’s surprised to find Ben cross-legged on the table- until he remembers that, yeah, Ben doesn’t sleep anymore.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

Ben glows a faint blue, smiles at him. “Hey,” he returns. “That was, ah, a rough talk, huh?”

The glass almost slips out of his hand. He whips away from the sink to look at Ben.

“Did everyone fucking hear that?”

Ben shakes his head, “No. No, I just… I was just wandering around. I didn’t stay for all of it, I just heard the start.”

Diego exhales, loosening up from the tension he didn’t even know built up in his body at the idea of every one of his siblings hearing that.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t mean to do those things,” he admits, for the first time, because he knows that Ben won’t tell anyone. “I just- I don’t know how to stop.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Ben says.

He drinks his water, stares into the glass, at his fingertips, pressed against the glass on the outside. Thinks _, these are destructive hands. These are hands that knot my own fucking noose._

Not Five. Not someone else. Him.

He swallows thickly and whispers, “Yeah.”

  * ····



He wakes up in his old bed. He goes down the same hallway where he and his siblings used to push each other aside and walks to the bathroom. He brushes his teeth until his gums bleed, washes his face, and ties up his hair with Allison’s dark blue hair tie. Everyone is already at the table when he comes down for breakfast.

He sits at the free spot between Klaus and Luther, lets Vanya set a plate with waffles in front of him and drown them in syrup because she knows he loves them like that. They eat quietly, comfortably, and Diego feels something pushing at him from inside with an insistent, dull force. He feels bad for not following the conversation, for not listening- and then someone laughs, someone else joins until it’s a symphony of laughter.

He pushes his plate away with a scrape of ceramic against the wood and tips forward until his forehead rests where his plate was seconds ago, breathes through it.

“Diego?” Luther asks as the laughter dies down. _No, keep laughing. Keep laughing_ , he wants to tell them.

“Leave him alone,” Five says.

“Diego, aw,” Klaus says. Then he wraps his arms around him, sideways from his chair, drapes himself over Diego’s back the best he can.

Diego spread his fingers over his thighs, then bunches up the soft material of his sweatpants in his fists.

Someone pokes his ankle with their toes and he breathes out onto the polished wood before turning his head to the side just enough to find Five’s eyes across the table, knowing and not as hard as they usually are. His brother smiles into his coffee, just the smallest twitch of his lips and Diego blinks at him before turning his head again.

Klaus leans further over him, sticks his face into his hair, and kisses the back of his head with a loud “Mwah!” that finally, _finally_ breaks the silent pause.

His siblings snort and giggle and Diego barks out a laugh that sends them all wheezing. Their voices bounce off the walls and furniture and their bodies and Diego keeps breathing and it’s not fine, but it will get better.


End file.
